Frank Müller and Ramiro Segura
University of Amsterdam and Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Digitalization refers to a multifaceted process which has
experienced a vertiginous expansion on a global scale in the last
few decades. This issue of CROLAR aims to explore one these facets:
digitalization of urban space in Latin America. Thus, the
contributions submitted discuss how the advances in digital
technology are connected to social inequalities in urban Latin
America, and which social, political, cultural and economic
opportunities and obstacles they offer for a more equal, just and
participative urbanization.

It is commonly said – perhaps quite mechanically – that Latin
America is the most urbanized and the most unequal continent in the
world. Without losing sight of the occasionally dramatic dimensions
of inequality in the continent, but also attempting to avert the
risk of falling into self-evident generalization, it is worth noting
that the expression “urban Latin America” refers, in this issue, to
a heterogeneous spatial, social and cultural geography. Because, on
the one hand, instead of presuming a “Latin American city” with
well-defined boundaries and regionally shared characteristics, in
the last few decades urban Latin American studies have shown an
heterogeneity and multiplicity of expressions of urbanism in the
continent that hampers their reduction to a single city model. On
the other hand, it is necessary to reflect on the heterogeneity of
social, cultural and spatial realities grouped under urban census
and administrative categories in each country of the region – which
usually include from great megalopolises (that were often conceived
from the model of the “Latin American city”), to medium-sized cities
and small towns and villages with a few thousand inhabitants.
Similarly to the cautions urged with regard to the idea of an “urban
era” on a global scale, “the urban” in Latin America is much more
plural than it could be assumed at first sight.

Digitalization is thus inscribed in a complex and inequitable
reality that it requires to comprehend the specificity of situations
and urban contexts of which it detaches itself and which it
modifies. Hence, we begin to investigate theories and methods that
allow us to understand the ways in which digital and urban are
connected, as well as the spatial, social, political and cultural
effects produced by digital technologies in an inequitable urban
scenario, avoiding hopeful technophilic promises as much as
pessimistic technophobic prognoses. In turn, it’s worth questioning
how digitalization – and its promises to improve quality of life,
boost economic growth, and promote human development – could
contribute to overcome persistent inequalities in the Global North
and South, providing opportunities of reversal for some, consumerism
as a lifestyle for many, but also disconnection and digital
exclusion for the ever marginalized.

Bearing these questions in mind, the contributions contained in
this issue review works that essay possible approaches and different
responses for the digitalization process in Latin America, from
works such as “I-Polis. Ciudades en la era de Internet”, by Susana
Finquelievich, in which a history, review and future prospection of
the relations between urbanism and new technologies are laid out for
Latin America, to books such as “Virtualização do corpo e
sexualidades online: encontros gay, gênero e performatividade” by
Kaciano Barbosa Gadelha, which investigates the role of
digitalization in the transformation of sociability, corporeality
and sexuality.

Between both these poles, a series of contributions concerned
particularly with the uses of technology in surveillance, security
and control of the urban space and their effects on urban life and
relationships are found. In this respect, in section Interventions,
the work “Hacking Team malware para la vigilancia en América.Latina”
by Gisela Pérez de Acha questions the political applications of
information from the Internet, emphasizing the need to update and
strengthen legal boundaries on the use of information by the state.

In section “Review Articles”, Claudio Altenhain reviews four works
grouped in the field of surveillance studies in Brazil: “Máquinas de
ver, modos de ser: vigilância, tecnologia e subjetividade” by
Fernanda Bruno, “Vigilância e visibilidade: espaço, tecnologia e
identificação” edited by Fernanda Bruno, Marta Kanashiro and Rodrigo
Firmino, “Todos os olhos: videovigilâncias, voyeurismos e
(re)produção imagética” by Bruno Cardoso, and “Securização urbana:
psicoesfera do medo à tecnoesfera da segurança” by Lucas Melgaço.
From the author’s perspective, this set of works discusses
digitalization of and from Latin America. Here, a series of specific
processes – authoritarian regimes in recent history, systematic
police violence, persistent social inequalities, ubiquitous fear of
violation and high levels of urbanization – enables a locally- and
culturally-oriented approach on the intersections between
digitalization (more specifically, surveillance) and the urban
space. Altenhain identifies the future challenge of producing from
the South a theoretical vocabulary that allows not only
specification of the dynamics in the region, but also essentially
“provincializing” Euro-North American studies on surveillance.

In particular, with the work of Marcela Suárez “Mediaciones
tecnofeministas en contra de la violência a las mujeres en México”,
we have included a second review article in this volume. Suárez
presents a critical review of the book “Networks of Outrage and
Hope: Social Movements in the Internet”, by Manuel Castells. Her
criticism is based on the feminist activism experience of the
collective Rexiste, in Mexico, which has used new technologies and
digital mediation strategies to intervene in urban and digital
spaces in order to make the growing violence against women in Mexico
visible. The author seems sceptical before the nearly deterministic
hope with which Castells and others have applauded the possibilities
brought about by technological innovations in communication to
launch social struggles against power. In this direction, it points
to a lack of analytical tools in Castells’ work to analyze non-human
agencies and evidence the power relations within a feminist
narrative of collective action. It shows that, far from constituting
autonomous and neutral objects, it is necessary to recognize the
agency that digital technologies – in this case, the drone – have in
forming new spaces of intervention in cities. In this sense,
Castells’ work could benefit from extending its analytical focus to
the different types of technology and mediating actors that play an
important role in urban spaces.

With concerns in line with the works abovementioned, this issue
encloses two interviews. One of them is given by Nailton de
Agostinho Maia about the Smart City and inclusion in Rio de Janeiro,
a city ranked as fifth in the global scale of “Smart Cities” and
that presents, on the other hand, a powerful and profound spatial
and social fracture. The other interview was carried out with Lucas
Melgaço, Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminology of
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, on policing, surveillance and new
technologies. In both cases, some maladjustments and contrasts are
found – at least in Rio’s case – between a set of policies and
interventions around “smart urbanism” and the day-to-day experience
of large sectors of the city’s inhabitants marked by inequality and
marginality.

On the other hand, in section “Current Debates”, and stepping away
from the focus theme of this number, we are glad to present the
discussion of three other books: “Global Knowledge Production in the
Social Science. Made in Circulation” by Wiebke Keim, Ercüment Çelik,
Christian Ersche and Veronika Wöhrer, “Development Discourse and
Global History: From Colonialism to the Sustainable Development
Goals” by Aram Ziai and “Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in
Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the Centaur”, edited by
Wil Pansters.

Lastly, we would like to thank the authors for their excellent
contribution, as well as everyone else that has provided their
support in the process of publishing this number.